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Month: December 2010

I should have known. Or at least…i could have known.
From the moment the first snowflake fell on German soil, all hopes of a normal trouble-free trip by train were lost. Deutsche Bahn is as famous (and notorious) for its delays during snowfall as for its punctuality during the rest of the year..

I arrived at Köln Hbf one hour late. For some reason, the ICE from Brussels didn’t go any further than Düren. While I waited (along with a few hundred other people) , feet in an impressive layer of snow, on a platform in the freezing cold for another train to Köln to arrive, we saw our previous train lock its’ doors and speed away in the opposite direction. A few people made grunting noises (those who had just missed their fast connection), a few nearly assaulted the single DB staff member on the platform (those who had missed their only connection of the day) and the rest was making fun of the German railway system (the Germans). Oh, and a few just disappeared and went to look for some French fries (but you can guess where they came from)

As is always the case in those difficult travelling times, people started to flock together. It seems to be a general natural law that humans, when in railway limbo (or any other form of transportational trouble) , flock. Like birds. They do so because it is comforting to hear other stories and know that it can always be worse. Like the man who was on his way from Maastricht to Köln, and had spent the last six hours on the rails on the 150 km that separate those two cities.. or the old lady and her husband, on their way to Berlin to visit their grandchildren (by train, for old time sake).

I, on the other hand, was still on schedule. My train to Kopenhagen was not going to arrive for another four hours, so I made a short walk through town, visited the Christmas market (where a local singer was singing her Christmas carols out loud, but quite out of tune) checking the departure board every now and then for news. The news came, but a little late. By the time the 447 service to Warsawa/Praha/Kobenhaven was on the board it was 20 minutes before its’ scheduled arrival. It came up…cancelled….

For these kind of festive occasions, Deutsche Bahn has invented a truly devilish instrument: the ServicePoint. Inhabited by grunting red-hatted people with a zombie-like look in their eyes and painfully slow movements, these cubicles are there for your general annoyance. They are the perfect instrument of torture. As a queue of angry and distressed travellers forms in front, and it is finally your turn to ask your question after half an hour of waiting, they suddenly decide to leave the cubicle and go for a pork sandwich, throwing a “Geschlossen” sign on their desk just before they lock the door upon the last remaining staff member (usually a trainee or zombie-in-waiting, typically the youngest of the horde), who finds himself attacked by a queue double the size.

Sadly, the younger staff can’t take weighty decisions, such as “can we make that train wait just a few minutes so all the people here can get in and reach their destination?”. Therefore, he has a direct phone connection to the senior staff members for help, but they don’t reply as they are eating their sandwich (nice to see there is still some basic logic left after all). After a few awkward minutes during which the man behind the desk was confused because he couldn’t find my train in the computer (it said “no”) I pointed to the departure table, where the truth stood spelled out in shiny blue and white letters. One phone call later I was on the train to Dortmund where, sure enough, stood the night train to Kopenhagen.

As it had bypassed Köln, it was perfectly on time and could leave immediately. Instead though, it waited. A full hour. When asked why, the senior platform manager, who could be recognized by the enormous walkie talkie in his hand and clearly had had his fair share of pork sandwiches as he looked like one, only resorted to a kind of sign language unknown to man. As it happened, our train was waiting for yet another train, transporting people from the stations the nighttrain had bypassed. (so we had at least translated one meaning of the Rosetta stone of platform management)
The one hour delay became a two hour delay due to snow and thanks to shunting problems in Hannover, a three hour delay. Once the train had reached Denmark and was left in the hands of Danish staff and engines, everything went like clockwork again.

There are some magnificent views to be found along the road, however. The Rendsburg High Bridge, for example, which is so high the train must make a few miles of loop around Rendsburg before it can call at Rendsburg station. While it steadily climbs the slope towards the bridge, you can see the monster of steel in the mist behind a city where only a few street lamps tell you the city is alive under its’ cover of snow.

And of course, the Great Belt Bridge, spanning the Great Belt (the strait between the Kattegat and the East Sea) and the only road connection into Zealand island from mainland Denmark .

As i mentioned before, i like travelling by train. In two weeks i will try to cross Europe from Copenhagen (Denmark) to Agen in the south of France through Cologne and Paris in 24 hours. (23h43 actually, but never mind that). Last year my train had no heating and broke down along the way to Berlin, so i’m eager to know what awaits me this year.

However, i’ve taken my precautions. Instead of a rather unhealthily short one hour time window between two trains in Cologne like last year, i have a comfortable 2.5 hour gap to catch up with any delays i might encounter, and arrive safely on time for my high-speed connection to Paris.

Along the journey, i will twitter and, where possible, blog about the temporary microcosms that trains really are…